Countless designs for infant beds have been heretofore introduced into the market place. It is a natural objective of articles of this type to support an infant so that it may sleep or rest or be awake in comfort and security.
Prior art cradles are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 523,337 to Ebert, 595,235 to Amrock, 894,003 to Ince, 1,204,416 to Doser, 1,376,476 to Stepke, 2,220,330 to Hilger, 3,203,012 to Roberts, 3,837,019 to Hoff and 4,550,456 to Allen, which are incorporated herein by reference. While these various arrangements provide infant cradles, they suffer from a number of disadvantages well known in the art, as for example, being complex to make and/or assemble, difficult to collapse into a small lightweight package of convenient shape for transport, comparatively expensive to manufacture and/or awkward to ship to the point of sale or, if by mail-order, to the purchaser. Accordingly, a need for improved cradles which overcome one or more of these or other deficiencies continues to exist.
As used herein, (i) the word cradle is intended to refer generally to infant beds which are adapted to be suspended from a support, as opposed to those infant beds which stand directly on the floor, (ii) the word "cloth" is intended to include any type of flexible woven or non-woven material which may be repeatedly folded without cracking or breaking, as for example, but not limited to fabrics, felts and meshes of various natural and/or man-made fibers, (iii) the word "cable" is intended to include ropes, cords, wires, chains, straps and/or other flexible support means of man-made and/or natural materials, or combinations thereof, and (iv) the word "joining panel" is intended to refer to a cloth piece of any shape in a cradle at a seam or corner or wear point to provide joining and/or strengthening. Plural forms of the above-defined words are intended to have corresponding meanings.